Desperation's Cravings
by ninahoechlin
Summary: With a set of dead parents and a family that sees no reason to take the seventeen year old into their homes, Leila Steele gets sent on a bus to live with her cousins Elena and Jeremy Gilbert in Mystic Falls. At the start of her stay, she is severely depressed over the loss of her parents, but will learning about the supernatural help her out of her rut or only make her go insane?


**I don't own The Vampire Diaries and no money or profit is being made from this story.**

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"The pain here I feel, try and tell me it's not real."

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With her headphones pushed deeply into her ears, Leila Steele leaned her head against the cold bus window and watched all of the droplets of rain trickle down the glass. Her eyes stung from not blinking and her back ached from sitting in the plastic bus seat for the past forty-four hours, all the way from Florence, Oregon to Mystic Falls, Virginia.

For the past two days, Leila had stayed awake with the coffee she ordered at every rest stop there was after going to the bathroom and buying several packs of gum. She hadn't showered in the past two days, or brushed her teeth or hair although she had popped in a piece of gum after every cup of coffee and drenched herself in perfume every twelve hours. For the hair dilemma, she simply tied her hair into a high ponytail on her head and hoped for the best.

She hadn't eaten anything in a week or two, she hadn't had an appetite since two weeks ago when she found her parents, but she drinks plenty of water and it is scientifically proven that one could survive thirty days without food if they had water everyday, she had sixteen days left. She wasn't trying to starve herself or kill herself, she just didn't have an appetite for anything but sadness and self-pity anymore.

Her thumb pressed the volume, turning it lower, as the bus drove throughout the familiar town that her cousins resided in. Her perfect cousins, Elena and Jeremy Gilbert, the two who got the most sympathy from the family when their parents died, but when Leila's died it took a week for someone to notice their absence, then it took another week for anyone to offer her a place to stay or else she would be heading to an orphanage right about now.

"Mystic Falls Bus Stop in three minutes." The bus driver said over the handheld that connected to every speaker in the bus, interrupting the elevator like music.

Leila looked around her, there were only four other people on the bus besides herself. There was a greasy man three seats behind her, much like there was a greasy teenage girl three seats in front of him, and a couple sat in the back corner with their arms wrapped around one another. They boarded at the bus stop in Salt Lake. The only other person on the bus was the bus driver, who she learned was named Phil.

Looking down at her phone, she saw that it was quarter after ten in the morning and her thumb began tapping away at the touch screen. She went to her contacts and quickly scrolled to the 'G' section of her contact list and found her cousin's name. She tapped at the message icon next to Elena's contact and typed a quick message saying she'd be at the bus stop in a matter of minutes.

After she was sure it was sent, she began to collect her two bags from under the bus seat. The bags were both small, black duffle bags. The smaller one of the two held her cell-phone and laptop charger, along with her laptop and the small amount of make-up she used on a daily basis. The make up was only if she ever decided to wear make up again, because honestly that had been the least of her worries recently. The other bag was full of the handfuls of clothes that she had grabbed and shoved into the bag when the police decided to only give her ten minutes to grab everything she needed before they gave her a one way bus ticket to Mystic Falls and sent her on her way.

Leila plopped the two bags softly on the long seat beside her before sitting up straighter and wiping at her face, hoping her cheeks and eyes didn't look to blotchy from the constant tears that streamed down her face, she hoped her skin wasn't transparent because of the lack of sleep and nutrition recently. She hoped that Elena would pretend to mistake her greasy hair for the luscious shine that the usual supermodel had like she always did when Leila used to go days without showering at the age of seven.

She felt the vibration of the breaks slowing as they squealed loudly against the concrete road. Taking in a deep breath, Leila closed her eyes in order to contain the tears before she looked out the large, bus window. Sitting on the dingy bench under the aluminum bus stop roof was her cousins Elena and Jeremy, smiles on their faces as they watched the bus pull to a stop in front of them. Beside them was a man who was unknown to Leila, but she assumed he was the man Alaric that was now officially her new parental figure since Aunt Jenna had passed recently.

Gathering her bags in her hands, she stood up and walked down the less than crowded aisle way of the bus hastily. When she started the bus trip, she was bitter that she was going to be living with Jeremy and Elena, the two who everyone in the family pitied for losing their parents. Who everyone wanted to take in, where as Leila was the opposite of the Gilbert siblings. Hell, she was even bitter until she saw her cousin, Elena. Now all she wanted to do was get off this bus and hold onto her cousin for dear life because, she knew how Leila felt, she knew what it was like to feel completely lost and alone without having the people there who raised you for the first seventeen years of her life. She knew what it was like to have them taken away from you all too suddenly.

As soon as Leila's combat boot covered foot hit the wet tar, Elena and Jeremy stood up with wide smile's on their faces. The depressed teenager wasted no time running on to the sidewalk and dropping her duffle bags before wrapping her arms tightly around Elena's waist, shoving her now crying eyes into her cousin's shoulder. Elena's arms quickly wrapped around Leila's back and she began rubbing soothing patterns into the cloth of Leila's flannel shirt with the palm of her hand. Soon, Leila felt another pair of arms wrapping around her upper waist and she turned her head from the cotton of Elena's sweatshirt so that her ear lay flat against her shoulder to see Jeremy's large build directly beside her. She smiled shyly up at him since he was a head taller than her now and he smiled sympathetically down at her before resting his chin on top of her head.

As Leila returned to snuggling her face into her cousin's shoulder, she began to cry harder at the fact that these two teenagers where the only family she had left. She didn't have her parents to tell her everything was going to be fine anymore or to accept her and her weird teenager stages. She had a seventeen year old and a sixteen year old at her side who may have accepted her to live in their household for a year, but might not except her, who she really is, at all. She was completely and utterly alone as of right now, and she didn't know if she could survive that.

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**AN: Yellloooooo everyone! Wow, third new story in a week? I'm on a rollllll! Now, I'm actually going to work on something that I could update, like Glory and Gore. If I happen to find a muse for it, if not I'll be updating Misunderstood! Yay! So, I can already tell you that I really like Leila and I'm going to make her relationship with her family extremely strong, so yeaaaaah. That family including Alaric. Lemme know if i should continue, i'm on my last week of school so yay! Four days of finals and I am done! Please tell me what you think, don't forget to follow, favorite, and review!**

-ninahoechilin


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